ABOVE: Chatham County Commission Chairman-elect Al Scott was recognized and then spoke at the Emancipation Proclamation Day Celebration. BELOW: Bishop Benjamin Collins greets audience members as he enters the church sanctuary Tuesday.

“The question comes to us, ‘Are we really free?’” the Rev. Benjamin Payne Collins asked a filled St. John Baptist Church, the Mighty Fortress on Hartridge Street, on the 150th anniversary of the 1863 document. “What have we accomplished with our freedom?”

“Do we look back and see where the Lord has brought us for over 150 years?”

He said the comfortable lifestyles most live have produced gloating of our success, rather than the praise for God.

“Somebody helped us to get everything we have,” said Collins, bishop with the Church of God in Christ and southeast Georgia prelate for the church.

“We act like everything we have, we obtained it by ourselves,” he thundered at the audience. “Most of the time, we don’t even put God in it.

“You did not do this by yourself. … Look what the Lord has done.”

The annual celebration, organized by the Emancipation Association of Savannah, Georgia And Vicinity Inc. brings leaders of black churches, politicians and residents together each Jan. 1 to celebrate the proclamation.

Elder J.E. Taylor, coordinator of the association’s Youth Division, told the group President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation was “really an act of war, a military necessity which set the freedom train in motion” toward abolishing slavery.

And, the Rev. George A. Moore Jr., pastor of St. Philip Monumental AME Church, criticized the impact of black-on-black crime, gang violence and barbaric behavior in the community, urging church leaders to get involved.

“We must open our churches to help us make our city a better place,” he said.

Moore is in his last year as president of the Emancipation Association.

The event also provides a platform to recognize black trailblazers venturing into uncharted territory.

Al Scott, who today will be sworn in as the first black chairman of the Chatham County commission, challenged youth to become involved in the process.

“You need to get involved because we’re looking for the next generation of leaders in Savannah,” Scott said. “I hope to serve as a role model for our youths. I want to get them involved.”

The Rev. Matthew Southall Brown, pastor emeritus at the host church, urged youth to learn their history.

“If you don’t know your history, you’re not going to get very far,” he said.

He presented the Rev. Larry Stell, pastor of Central Baptist Church in Hitch Village, with a “cash incentive award” for having the most young people from his congregation attending last year’s event.

Collins also weighed in on the younger set.

“We have not brought our young people with us,” he said, adding there has not been the lesson that blacks have come “through hard trials and tribulations.”

“It has taken years and years for most of us to get where we are now.”

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

The Emancipation Proclamation, signed on Jan. 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln, effectively led to the abolishment of slavery in the United States. It serves as one of our country’s most important documents. Here is the text in its entirety:

That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

That the executive will on the 1st day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States. Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States the following, to wit: Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Morthhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all case when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.